Death's Head: Freelance Peacekeeping Agent in the Marvel Universe (From Stockbridge to Segonus: A Doctor Who Magazine Comics Marathon, Part 15)

Collection published: 2019
Acquired: March 2020
Second half read: July 2021

Death's Head: Freelance Peacekeeping Agent

stories from Death's Head vol. 1 #9-10 (Aug.-Sept. 1989), Strip #13-20 (Aug.-Nov. 1990), Fantastic Four vol. 1 #338 (Mar. 1990), The Sensational She-Hulk #24 (Feb. 1991), Marvel Heroes #33 (Mar. 2011), and What If... vol. 2 #54 (Oct. 1993)

Writers: Simon Furman & Walter Simonson with Ferg Handley

Pencilers: Geoff Senior, Bryan Hitch & Walter Simonson with John Ross & Simon Williams

Inkers: Geoff Senior, Bryan Hitch, Walter Simonson & John Beatty with John Ross & Simon Willams

Colorists: Louise Cassell, Euan Peters, Geoff Senior, Christie Scheele, Glynis Oliver & Sarra Mossoff with John Charles, Jason Cardy & Kat Nicholson

Letterers: Annie Halfacree, Helen Stone, Todd Klein, Jim Novak & Janice Chiang with Tim Warran-Smith

Issue #8 brought a big change of direction for Death's Head... but due to rights issues, it can't be printed in this collection! Suffice it to say that the Doctor takes Death's Head out of the Doctor Who universe in 8162 and plops him in the Marvel universe in the present day; I will eventually read it when I pick up The Incomplete Death's Head. So now Death's Head is in his third universe thus far!

So #9 picks up with Death's Head on the roof of Four Freedoms Plaza, where the Fantastic Four live. At first they fight, of course, but then they must team up the Fantastic Four's security system goes haywire. At the end of this issue, the Fantastic Four try to send Death's Head back to 8162 (I guess no one knows he's in the wrong universe), but when Reed Richards realizes he's a paid killer, he switches it off, which ejects Death's Head in the far-off year of, um, 2020. (Iron Man 2020 had been a feature of some Marvel comics, so this was an established setting.) The set-up is a bit confusing, as Death's Head is already established, and trying to find money to fix up his spaceship... which didn't come with him... and which doesn't appear in 2020 until the issue's end! 

Even Death's Head can't resist a baby.
from Death's Head vol. 1 #9 (script by Simon Furman, art by Geoff Senior)

These two issues are basically fine. There's some fun interplay between Death's Head and the FF, and the Iron Man 2020 has some great Death's Head moments, but on the other hand falls foul of the dull convolutions that bedevilled a number of the pre-time-jump stories. Overall though, one can sense a comic frantically searching for a new direction... and getting cancelled abruptly, as an obviously hastily final two pages in #10 sum up a lot.

After this, Death's Head doesn't have a status quo. The graphic novel The Body in Question (which has three parts; book one is set between the antepenultimate and penultimate pages of #10, and then books two and three after #10) makes the mistake of delving into the history of Death's Head, though it does reunite him with his supporting cast from his ongoing. No one cares about where Death's Head came from; what makes him interesting is what he does. Unfortunately this story gives us very little of that, instead spending time on a lot of cod mysticism. There is one good joke, though.

Actually, the issue number below is an educated guess. I can find very little information out there about the original appearance of this story.
from Strip #17 (script by Simon Furman, art by Geoff Senior)

I don't know why Furman bothered bringing the supporting cast back, because they never appear again. We next follow Death's Head into Fantastic Four #338, when he's starting freelancing for the Time Variance Authority. This is not much of a Death's Head story; it's just a Fantastic Four one he happens to be in. Better use is made of him in Sensational She-Hulk #24; he's back in New York 2020... but in a grave for some reason. (He still has his TVA time-bike, though, because he never returned it.) The story is goofy, but enjoyable, and actually makes good use of the 2020 setting in that something She-Hulk does in 1991 has repercussions thirty years later... and vice versa. Then in 2011, he's being hired by aliens to fight on their behalf (against the Hulk, as Earth's champion). (I assume because of time travel again, but I don't think anyone says.) Each of these is probably fine as a guest appearance, but it is a pretty disappointing way for the character to go out. He's brought into the Marvel universe... and promptly amounts to nothing!

Only thing that comes close to Geoff Senior drawing Death's Head is Walt Simonson doing it, complete with those amazing Simonson sound effects.
from Fantastic Four vol. 1 #338 (script & art by Walter Simonson)

Part of the reason was that in 1992, he was killed off and replaced by Death's Head II, an "extreme" 1990s character. So Death's Head makes it into a new universe, and is killed off for his troubles. Simon Furman got the opportunity to kind of undo this in an issue of What If..., which has him uniting a team of 1992 superheroes to take down a villain in 2020. It probably would have been much more interesting if I was familiar with the story it was rewriting... but I also can't imagine I would enjoy reading that story either! Geoff Senior's usually solid art seems compromised in pursuit of the mediocre 1990s aesthetic, to boot.

Is he in a grave because the character was "dead," as in no longer published? Is that the joke? If so, he'd only been last published three months prior!
from The Sensational She-Hulk #24 (script by Simon Furman, art by Bryan Hitch & John Beatty)

So, I wish Furman had left Death's Head in Los Angeles 8162 and perfected that set-up instead. This was a pretty dismal way for a once-great character to go out. (Though, in my marathon at least, there is more Death's Head to come.)

(Also it seems like a bummer that this doesn't contain the 2011 Revolutionary War: Death's Head one-shot... I haven't read it, though, so maybe there's a good reason for that.)

This post is the fifteenth in a series about the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip and Marvel UK. The next installment covers The Good Soldier. Previous installments are listed below:

1. The Iron Legion
2. Dragon's Claw 
3. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume One
4. The Tides of Time
5. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Two
6. Voyager
7. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Three
8. The World Shapers
9. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Four
10. The Age of Chaos
11. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Five
12. A Cold Day in Hell!
13. Death's Head: Freelance Peacekeeping Agent (part 1)
14. Nemesis of the Daleks
    

Death's Head: Freelance Peacekeeping Agent in the Doctor Who Universe (From Stockbridge to Segonus: A Doctor Who Magazine Comics Marathon, Part 13)

Collection published: 2019
Acquired: March 2020
First half read: June 2021

Death's Head: Freelance Peacekeeping Agent

stories from Dragon's Claws #5 (Nov. 1988), Death's Head vol. 1 #1-7 (Dec. 1988–June 1989), and Marvel Comics Presents vol. 1 #76 (May 1991)

Writer: Simon Furman

Pencilers: Geoff Senior, Bryan Hitch, Lee Sullivan, John Higgins & Liam Sharp

Inkers: Geoff Senior, Mark Farmer, David Hine, Lee Sullivan, John Higgins, Paul Marshall & Jeff Anderson

Colorists: Steve White, Nick Abadzis, Louise Cassell & Stuart Place with Joe Rosas

Letterers: Annie Halfacree with Richard Starkings

I had always intended to follow Death's Head out of A Cold Day in Hell! and into his solo series. If I had been smart, though, I would have picked up Panini's two-volume collection of his adventures; since Panini has (had?) the UK reprint rights to both Marvel and Doctor Who, they could include both Death's Head stories with Doctor Who elements and ones with Marvel elements. Alas, I did not, and that collection is now prohibitively expensive and/or just unavailable. Instead, I picked up this Marvel collection, which has to skip over, for example, Death's Head #8 because both the Doctor and Josiah W. Dogbolter appear in it.

So: in the Transformers storyline "The Legacy of Unicron!", Death's Head was lost in a time portal; in the Doctor Who Magazine story The Crossroads of Time, he emerged in the Doctor Who universe. At the end of that story, the Doctor sent him to Earth in the year 8162, setting up his appearances here. That means all the stories in the first half (which are the ones I'm discussing here) take place in the Doctor Who universe, and thus also Marvel UK's Dragon's Claws series must take place in the Who universe, though neither Lars Pearson's Ahistory nor the Tardis wiki seem to buy this argument. As I discussed in my review of A Cold Day in Hell!, the fact that Dragon's Claws is set in the 82nd century is actually what allows us to date a significant number of DWM stories: Dreamers of Death, The Free-Fall Warriors, The Moderator, The Shape Shifter, Polly the Glot, War-Game, the Kane's Story sequence, A Cold Day in Hell!, Redemption!, and many I haven't gotten to yet must take place in the 82nd century because Death's Head #8 established that Dogbolter was from the same era as Dragon's Claws. Yet, as far as I know, we never see Earth in DWM during what Lars Pearson calls "the Mazuma Era"; the status of humanity's homeworld in this time is only fleshed out in Dragon's Claws and in Death's Head #1-8. (I think? It may have appeared in passing in the Kane's Story sequence now that I think about it.)

Earth in the 82nd century isn't up to much... maybe that's why the Doctor didn't care if he unleashed Death's Head there.
from Death's Head vol. 1 #3 (art by Bryan Hitch & David Hine)

 
Okay, okay, enough context, what about the stories? Reading this, at first I wondered if Death's Head could actually work as a solo character. What made him fun in The Transformers was the way he was above it all-- or rather, beneath it all. Here's this vast cosmic war happening, and especially in the 2006-set stories he originated in, it features titans of the universe. But Death's Head doesn't give a crap: he just cares about money, and if someone is going to call him a "bounty hunter" instead of a "freelance peacekeeping agent." The fun derives from the fact that Death's Head is basically operating in a totally different story to that of our usual protagonists and antagonists. But can that be maintained when he becomes the star of the show?

Most of the time, Simon Furman seemingly can't figure out how to do it. At first, this title really struggles because of Dragon's Claws. The first issue collected here is Dragon's Claws #5, and the story drops you right in, with no context for who these people are or why you should care about them. Which, okay, to be fair, it was their series and Death's Head was a guest star. Why should they be explained? But Death's Head was the breakout star of Marvel UK, and surely Death's Head fans followed him from The Transformers into this without picking up issues #1-4? Yet no concession is made for them. This is also true of some of the individual issues of the actual solo series once it gets started, especially #2, which really strongly assumes I understand who all these characters are and what they are doing when I just don't.

Just try to care about these guys... it can't be done!
from Dragon's Claws #5 (art by Geoff Senior)

In issues #3-7, the series moves into its short-lived status quo, where Death's Head with his assistant Spratt set up a business in the Los Angeles Resettlement. There are two I particularly liked, two that make the format work. The first is #5, which brings back self-interested space trash Keepsake from the Doctor Who Magazine story Keepsake. Now, when I saw this, my reaction was, "uh, really?" because Keepsake wasn't exactly a noteworthy story where I was thinking, "let's bring back that guy." But when I read it, I finally saw what this series was doing and could do. In this one, Keepsake returns to L.A. to meet up with an old partner; between the two of them, they have a complete map to a buried treasure. Only Keepsake-- who now has a new girlfriend in tow-- ran out on his wife so that she wouldn't get part of his half, and so the wife hires Death's Head to get Keepsake. The result of this is a confusing panoply of Keepsake vs. ex-partner and Keepsake vs. ex-wife. But just like the Autobot/Decepticon war, Death's Head doesn't give a hoot, he just wants a payday. It's dumb, and it's fun because Death's Head agrees with us that it's dumb, and doesn't give the interpersonal dynamics any real thought if he gets his money.

Don't annoy Death's Head, lady.
from Death's Head vol. 1 #5 (art by John Higgins)

Similarly, #7 is about Death's Head and Spratt chasing a mark-- but what they don't know is that two different bounty hunters are chasing down Death's Head. So these two bounty hunters are trying to kill him, which he doesn't know, and also trying to kill each other so that the other one doesn't get the credit. Again, this sense that Death's Head attitude means that he's just above it all is where these stories are the most fun.

They've won, and they don't even know why.
from Death's Head vol. 1 #7 (art by Bryan Hitch & Jeff Anderson)

But when they expect you to take these things seriously, they don't work, because much of the time, they are impossible to: a lot of macho early 1990s stuff, even though it's still the late 1980s. Too many stories are dependent on action, which I don't care about, or keeping track of a bunch of interchangeable nobodies. There are occasional flashes of wit and color, but overall the effect is drab.

(I did also like #1, where we get a series of flashbacks each of which ends with Death's Head laying down one of his principles of being a freelance peacekeeping agent.)

Still, I think the comic was getting somewhere and figuring itself out, which is why it's a bummer that #8 totally shifted the direction of the comic, though I'm sure there were good sales-related reasons for this. Well, at least I think it'll be a bummer; I'll see when I get there.

This post is the thirteenth in a series about the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip and Marvel UK. The next installment covers Nemesis of the Daleks. Previous installments are listed below:

1. The Iron Legion
2. Dragon's Claw 
3. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume One
4. The Tides of Time
5. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Two
6. Voyager
7. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Three
8. The World Shapers
9. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Four
10. The Age of Chaos
11. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Five
12. A Cold Day in Hell!
    

A Cold Day in Hell! (From Stockbridge to Segonus: A Doctor Who Magazine Comics Marathon, Part 12)

After a brief respite, I'm back to catching up on reviews of Doctor Who books. I guess I have just read a lot of them a late! So for the next few weeks, it will be various bits and bobs from the Doctor Who universe, starting with...

Collection published: 2009
Contents originally published: 1987-89
Acquired: June 2009
Read: May 2021

A Cold Day in Hell!: Collected Comic Strips from the Pages of Doctor Who Magazine
by Simon Furman, John Ridgway, Bryan Hitch, Lee Sullivan, Grant Morrison, Geoff Senior, John Higgins, Alan Grant, Dan Abnett, Mike Collins, et al.

This is the first DWM graphic novel (in strip order) that has bonus features beyond an archival interview; it contains a new introduction by Richard Starkings (the strip's editor for much of this era) and a set of interviews with the writers and artists put together by John Freeman (the magazine's editor for much of this era). This means I have more insight into the production decisions behind the strip than in previous eras.

The big difference between this run and previous ones is that it has neither a consistent writer (as the strip did from #1 to #110) nor a consistent artist (as the strip did from #1 to 69 and #88 to 133). Starkings explains the decision: "it had often occurred to me that the strip should reflect the series and feature a different writer and director for each story" (p. 6). But I think this neglects a way in which television is a different medium than tv. On screen, the writer and director might always change, but the performance stays the same. Every episode has got Sylvester McCoy in. But in a comic, the artist isn't just the director, they're also every actor. This means that even when the strips are good, there's no throughline, and the lack of consistency leaves it all feeling like less than the sum of its parts. From #70 to 87, you had a consistent tone and style from Steve Parkhouse even if the art was always different; from #111 to 133 you had a consistent tone and style from John Ridgway even if the writing was always different. Here you have neither. And no companion! (The strip was last companion free from #49 to 77.) I cannot think of any other ongoing non-anthology comic that took an approach like this.

from Doctor Who Magazine #133

Now, this might all be rubbish, because I read this all in one go, whereas it would have come out across two years. Maybe it reads fine when you have a month gap every time the creative team changes? But this is how I read it!

A Cold Day in Hell! / Redemption!, from Doctor Who Magazine #130-34 (Nov. 1987–Mar. 1988)
stories by Simon Furman, pencils by John Ridgway and Kev Hopgood, inks by Tim Perkins, letters by Zed

These two strips transition out of the trappings of the sixth Doctor era: Frobisher departs the Doctor; when he leaves, new companion Olla is introduced, but she's gone within one more strip herself! The actual stories here are so-so, the Doctor running around after Ice Warriors and such, and doing a lot of goofy stuff that makes you suspect all Simon Furman had to go off was the script for Time and the Rani. Frobisher's writing-out is pretty perfunctory, as is Olla's.

from Doctor Who Magazine #135

The Crossroads of Time, from Doctor Who Magazine #135 (Apr. 1988)
story by Simon Furman, art by Geoff Senior, letters by Zed

So I've been reading the Marvel UK Transformers comics in parallel with the DWM strips, all because here they collide. At the end of the Transformers story "The Legacy of Unicron!" (in Transformers Classics UK, Volume Five), the robot mercenary Death's Head is tossed into a malfunctioning time portal; here we find out where he went, as he emerges in the Doctor Who universe. I don't object to this on principle; indeed, it strikes me as one of the USPs of reading the strip, and I was curious to see how this whole crossover thing would shake out. 

Alas, in practice, it's freaking terrible. Death's Head, who in Transformers was a "principled" freelance peacekeeping agent in that he killed for money-- and not for pleasure-- here attacks the Doctor for no real good reason, just an accidental collision in the Time Vortex. The Doctor fights him with lethal force! It doesn't kill Death's Head, but he doesn't know that; I get that Death's Head had to be shrunk down to human scale if he was going to interact with other Marvel UK characters, but maybe the Doctor could have done it on purpose? And then the Doctor sends this homicidal bounty hunter to Earth in the year 8162 and is just like, "Ah, oh well, I'm sure it'll be fine." I think there could have been a great story about a clash of values between the Doctor and Death's Head... but this is manifestly not it. I can only hope that Death's Head's solo feature, which I plan on following him into, is better than this.

from Doctor Who Magazine #138

Claws of the Klathi!, from Doctor Who Magazine #136-38 (May-July 1988)
story by Mike Collins, art by Kev Hopgood and Dave Hine, letters by Zed

This is a decent piece of Victoriana by stalwart DWM contributor Michael Collins. It feels to me like it has a bit too much going for its three parts: a freakshow escapee, a pair of alien refugees, a giant robot, a gathering of men of science, and the Crystal Palace struggle for space. The men of science, for example, kind of feel pointless. But it's certainly the best story in this volume thus far, and Kev Hopgood is one of DWM's better post-Ridgway artists.

Culture Shock! / Keepsake / Planet of the Dead / Echoes of the Mogor! / Time and Tide, from Doctor Who Magazine #139-46 (Aug. 1988–Mar. 1989)
stories by Grant Morrison, Simon Furman, John Freeman, Dan Abnett, and Richard Alan & John Carnell; art by Bryan Hitch, John Higgins, Lee Sullivan, John Ridgway, and Dougie Braithwaite & Dave Elliott; letters by Zed, Annie Halfacree, and Tom Orzechowski

This run of strips reminded me a lot of Steve Moore and Steve Parkhouse's run from #46 to 60: it's all one- and two-part stories, often hinging on some kind of highbrow science fictional concept taken to a depressing conclusion. In Culture Shock!, the Doctor discovers a sentient race of bacteria who need his help; in Keepsake he (accidentally?) bullies a mercenary into helping him out; in Echoes of the Mogor!, he finds a long-dead species who embody their memories in crystal; in Time and Tide, he comes upon a dying species on a water planet. They are all varying degrees of fine, and the artists all have varying degrees of command over Sylvester McCoy's likeness. Culture Shock! had a cool hook, but I didn't really buy the Doctor's depression; I liked the idea of Keepsake but thought the humor didn't quite come off; Time and Tide was crazy depressing, and am not convinced it really fits the character of the Doctor. (There's a lot of standing around watching people die!) 

Planet of the Dead has the Doctor encountering first dead companions, and then his own previous selves. I didn't think John Freeman really captured the voices of the companions and Doctors enough to pull this off, but Lee Sullivan was an excellent choice for illustrating it.

from Doctor Who Magazine #147

Follow That TARDIS!, from Doctor Who Magazine #147 (Apr. 1989)
story by John Carnell, art by Andy Lanning, John Higgins, Kev Hopgood, Dougie Braithwaite, & Dave Elliott, letters by Bambos

The Doctor is forced by the Sleeze Brothers, a pair of private investigators, to chase the Monk's TARDIS throughout a series of historical disasters. I am convinced this could be funny, but I did not think the joke actually came off.

Invaders from Gantac!, from Doctor Who Magazine #148-50 (May-July 1989)
story by Alan Grant, art by Martin Griffiths and Cam Smith, letters by Gordon Robson

Going into this, I was like, "Oh no... another comedy story." But it turned out to be the best story in the whole volume! The Doctor lands on Earth in the far future year of 1992 to find out that it's been taken over by aliens, and his only ally is a homeless man named Leapy. In its mix of big events and light comedy, it very much felt like something I could imagine Russell T Davies putting on screen as a big, bright two-parter in the Aliens of London/Rise of the Cybermen/Daleks Take Manhattan/The Sontaran Stratagem slot. There's some good comedy, but also a serious edge: more than any other story, I could imagine McCoy doing this on screen. It's pacey and twisty, and the only thing I didn't like was the kind of perfunctory ending. That said, Griffiths and Smith don't exactly nail McCoy's likeness. (But then, who does!?)

from Doctor Who Magazine #140

Stray Observations:

• If you were a hypothetical reader who never watched the show, I think you would imagine that after The World Shapers, the sixth Doctor, Frobisher, and Peri all went on an adventure where Peri left with Yrcanos and the Doctor regenerated. There's no indication here that, say, Frobisher was dropped off or anything.
• I read The Age of Chaos, even though it was written many years later, between The World Shapers and A Cold Day in Hell! Doing so revealed an inconsistency; the way Frobisher mopes over Peri in Cold Day makes it clear he hasn't been visiting her and her descendants as Age of Chaos established, and wound of her departure is obviously quite raw. But if you wanted to get quite convoluted, I think you could solve it by imagining that for Frobisher, Age of Chaos takes place after A Cold Day in Hell!! The sixth Doctor and Peri drop off Frobisher and experience the events of Trial of a Time Lord. Frobisher is then picked up by the seventh Doctor, who tells him what happened, and then he gets dropped off again on A-Lux. Then he gets picked up by the sixth Doctor, who takes him to Krontep and meet Peri again, along with the kids. Easy!
• Poor Olla: I am reasonably sure she is the only DWM-original companion to never appear or even be mentioned again. The Doctor doesn't call her up for help in The Stockbridge Showdown!
• I did notice that in A Cold Day in Hell!, Furman did something he also does in his Transformers strips: so that reading the recap isn't dull, it usually also includes new information. But that means if you only skim the recap, you might miss the new information! However, I am used to it now, and it doesn't throw me as much.
• Richard Starkings says the first thing he did when taking over as editor was fire John Ridgway because he cost so much... but back in the introduction to Voyager, Ridgway said he quit when the strip switched to McCoy so that he could focus on the steadier income from drawing DC's Hellblazer.
• Fun fact: In The Crossroads of Time, the Doctor sends Death's Head to the year 8162. This is because that was the setting of Marvel UK's Dragon's Claws series, but because Dogbolter showed up in the Death's Head solo series that span out of Dragon's Claws, that means a significant chunk of the DWM mythos must also date to the 82nd century. If that's when Dogbolter is from, it must also be when Frobisher is from; we know the Free-Fall Warriors are from the same era as Dogbolter; and we know Ivan Asimoff is also from that era. It also seems likely that Olla is from the era. Abel's Story and War-Game also go in this era. Much much later, The Stockbridge Showdown would place Sharon's new home era in the same time as all the others as well. All because Marvel UK wanted to spin Death's Head into his own series! Plus, this means Dragon's Claws takes place in the Doctor Who universe...
  
• Claws of the Klathi! commits one of my neo-Victorian pet peeves: there is no way a man of means who dabbled in science would call himself a "scientist" in 1851 as the gentlemen do here. It sounds like a job one might have!
• Culture Shock! was the last Doctor Who Magazine contribution from Grant Morrison, who is arguably the most famous person to have worked on the strip other than Dave Gibbons. (Alan Moore only wrote for the back-ups.) He would write creator-owned stuff like We3 (Homeward Bound with killer cyborgs) later on, but I know him best as a prolific DC contributor, writing things like JLA, Seven Soldiers of Victory, All-Star Superman, 52, Final Crisis, and The Multiversity.
• Bryan Hitch illustrates just one strip, but still gets cover credit; he would do some genre-redefining work in the 2000s on The Ultimates for Marvel and The Authority for Wildstorm.
  
• Doctor Who tie-ins often like to do a thing where the Doctor remembers his companions who died while travelling with him, but are hamstrung in this by the fact that on screen, that amounts to unmemorable and/or terrible ones like Katarina, Sara, and Adric. So DWM gains a slight boost from the events of The World Shapers in that stories like Planet of the Dead can now use Jamie, a dead companion who is both good and memorable.
• Echoes of the Mogor! is the first story to establish that the Doctor is trying to get to the planet Maruthea; in Invaders from Gantac! we learn he's attempting to attend the birthday of someone called Bonjaxx, but he doesn't make it within the confines of this volume.
• It also introduces the Foreign Hazard Duty team, a sort of future space police; evidently we will see them in future volumes.
• "Richard Alan" is a pseudonym for strip editor Richard Starkings; so is "Zed."
  
• Follow That TARDIS! is, I believe, the only DWM contribution of Andy Lanning, who would become a prolific contributor to Marvel and DC in the 2000s. My favorite work of his is a run on Legion of Super-Heroes, but he also contributes to basically every DC event, including Infinite Crisis, 52, and Flashpoint. He strikes me as one of those guys who is capable of great work, but will also happily contribute to drek if that's what you need.
  
• So far the Master has never appeared in a DWM strip; the Meddling Monk has appeared twice. Who is the real Time Lord nemesis of the Doctor?
• This volume contains the only Doctor Who Magazine contributions of Kev Hopgood, but he must have made a good impression on someone for his Sylvester McCoy likeness, as twenty-five years later he returned to Doctor Who to illustrate the seventh Doctor segment of Prisoners of Time! I liked his art here, but in my review of that volume I called it "stiff."
  
• The Sleeze Brothers went on to have their own comic series from Marvel. The Tardis wiki doesn't count it as part of the Doctor Who universe, but who knows why. Their rules for "inclusion" are typically pretty asinine, anyway. You can get it pretty cheap on the secondary market, but I am not sure I am motivated to do so...

• 

  from Doctor Who Magazine #148
  

  Alan Grant never contributed to DWM again, and hilariously he doesn't even remember that he did this strip. I know him best as the co-writer of L.E.G.I.O.N. from DC, with fellow Marvel UK contributor Barry Kitson. But of course his greatest contribution to comics was the seminal and influential Bob the Galactic Bum.
  
• Yes, that's a lot of "where are they now?" updates in this one! If your comic collection has twenty-one individual contributors (not counting letterers), I guess odds are a lot of them will go on to be famous.
  

This post is the twelfth in a series about the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip and Marvel UK. The next installment covers part 1 of Death's Head: Freelance Peacekeeping Agent. Previous installments are listed below:

1. The Iron Legion
2. Dragon's Claw 
3. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume One
4. The Tides of Time
5. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Two
6. Voyager
7. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Three
8. The World Shapers
9. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Four
10. The Age of Chaos
11. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Five
    

The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Five (From Stockbridge to Segonus: A Doctor Who Magazine Comics Marathon, Part 11)

Collection published: 2014
Contents originally published: 1988
Read: April 2021

The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Five

editorial notes and assistance by James Roberts

Written by Simon Furman, Ian Rimmer, and Richard Alan

Pencils by Geoff Senior, Dan Reed, Jeff Anderson, Bryan Hitch, Lee Sullivan, and Robin Smith

Inks by Geoff Senior, Dan Reed, Jeff Anderson, Bryan Hitch, Stephen Baskerville, Lee Sullivan, Dave Elliott, and Robin Smith

Colors by Steve White and Euan Peters

Letters by Annie Halfacree, Richard Starkings, Gary Gilbert, Tom Frame, Gordon Robson, and Steve Parkhouse

This volume opens with its biggest story. "The Legacy of Unicron!" is an epic entirely set in the future timeline (though the future characters are battling over a time portal, so it is about a threat to the present day, even if we never actually go there. Like a lot of Furman's epics, it's a pile-up of conflicting factions and motivations: the Autobots, the Decepticons, Death's Head, and Unicron all have their own aims, and alliances shift throughout. It's a thing he's got quite good at by this point, and this is no exception. I don't think it's the best of these, but it is the kind of thing I enjoy-- and the kind of thing I wish I'd read when I was fourteen, because I would have enjoyed it even more then.

Also, these days, faux-mythic stuff in Transformers leaves me cold, but I would have ate it up then. Crazy to think that Furman's ideas here had an influence reaching all the way to Michael Bay!
from The Transformers #150 (script by Simon Furman, art by Jeff Anderson & Stephen Baskerville)

Notably, this story features my whole excuse for reading these Transformers stories as part of a Doctor Who Magazine comics marathon: at its climax, Death's Head falls into a time portal and disappears. He will never again appear in a Transformers story, but the next installment on my list will reveal where he went... (Cyclonus and Scourge are sent back in time, explaining how come in the UK stories they are created by Galvatron in the year 2006, but in the US stories they work for Scorponock in the 1980s. I'll be honest: I hadn't noticed. The way Furman handles it, it even makes sense that it hadn't previously come up that they were from the future.)

You're never gonna live the good life, dude. Just accept it.
from The Transformers #146 (script by Simon Furman, art by Geoff Senior)

After that, we're back to the present day, with stories that do the usual Transformers UK thing of weaving in and out of US tales.* A few focus on Galvatron manipulating the Decepticons; others let us know what is happening on Cybertron. I mostly enjoyed these. These are some of the better Galvatron stories-- when he has BIG PLANS you know they are going to fail because otherwise the universe is doomed, but when his plans are smaller scale, he can demonstrate his intelligence and cunning by outmaneuvering Shockwave.

You don't mess with Galvatron because he is always messing with you.
from The Transformers #152 (script by Simon Furman, art by Jeff Anderson & Stephen Baskerville)

We also have undead zombies on Cybertron, which is fun stuff, though alas, the Wrecker leader Springer is often improbably indecisive. But it's nice to see Ultra Magnus cut loose, even if he somehow wasn't able to find the Ark in two years(!) of traveling across America. And then he's back to Earth for a showdown with Galvatron, building up to something bigger. (That evidently never actually happened!)

How did Emirate Xaaron get to be the leader of the Autobots with a face that dumb-looking?
from The Transformers #167 (script by Simon Furman, art by Jeff Anderson and Dave Elliott)

We also have a couple stories from the 1989 Annual. I will admit I zoned out during "Prime Bomb!" (Ian Rimmer is not a great prose stylist, I guess), but I did enjoy Richard Starkings and Robin Smith's "Peace," set in the far future, when the Autobots have finally won... and are so used to war that peace only lasts a day before hostilities restart. It's mind-boggling to contemplate, but the Transformers have been at war for four million years. How could they ever adjust to peace after that? It's a theme that James Roberts and John Barber took up to good effect in their IDW runs, but it's nice to see a bleaker take on it here.

Hey, kids! Comics!
from The Transformers #169 (script by Simon Furman, art by Robin Smith)

My big complaint about this volume is not really its fault per se: it's the last one! In his editorial notes, James Roberts often mentions the forthcoming volume six, but seven years later, it has never come to pass. I am sure there are valid financial reasons for this, but it's depressing; this was a high quality reprint series, and the UK stories are pretty tricky to access otherwise. Titan did collect many of them, and I will track those down eventually, but these were beautiful volumes and Roberts's interviews and commentary were amazing.

* The chronology for this volume is a bit smoother than that of the previous volume. (Allowing for the fact that it overlaps with the previous volume, but I'll ignore that here). Mostly these stories overlap with ones collected in the US Classics, Vol. 4. My suggested sequence is: UK #146-53; US #37-39; UK #160-61; US #40; UK #164-73; US #41-42, 44.

This post is the eleventh in a series about the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip and Marvel UK. The next installment covers A Cold Day in Hell! Previous installments are listed below:

1. The Iron Legion
2. Dragon's Claw 
3. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume One
4. The Tides of Time
5. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Two
6. Voyager
7. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Three
8. The World Shapers
9. The Transformers Classics UK, Volume Four
10. The Age of Chaos
    

Faster than a DC Bullet Special: Superheroes and Utopia, Part II: The Absolute Authority

Comic hardcover, n.pag.
Published 2002 (contents: 1999-2000)
Borrowed from the library
Read March 2012

The Absolute Authority

Writer: Warren Ellis

Penciler: Bryan Hitch

Inker: Paul Neary
Colorist: Laura DePuy
Letterers: Bill O'Neil, Ryan Cline, Ali Fuchs, Robbie Robbins
Additional Colors: David Baron
Additional Inks: Andrew Currie

The title of The Absolute Authority is a fortunate congruence: this is simply the "Absolute Edition" of a series called The Authority, but unlike the case of, say, Absolute Green Lantern: Rebirth or even The Absolute Watchmen, the title actually has a meaning apart from that. The Authority is about a group of superheroes who have set themselves up as Earth's utmost authority, since that's the best way that it can be protected.

It's fascinating in the way that it chooses to depict utopian violence. Peter Paik, as I've said many times, argues that you can't get a utopia without violence. What then interests me is the way that utopian stories elide violence to make the utopia more palatable. Superhero comics were originally utopian, and the original Siegel and Shuster Superman stories solved this problem by simply being very cartoony. Superman is making the world a better place by putting arms lobbyists in war zones, trapping corrupt mine owners in dangerous mines, smashing used car lots, and destroying entire neighborhoods, but somehow no one ever gets hurt. This isn't a gritty, realistic world, so you believe it. Watchmen moves Superman's fantasy violence into a gritty, realistic world, and shows you the consequences of one man using his power to shape the world: mass death. But possibly also world peace? Moore's depiction is surprisingly nuanced, in that I think it's completely impossible to see who in the story he agrees with (if anyone).

The Authority continues the tradition of these earlier texts, but weirdly merges the optimism of the 1930s Superman stuff with the realism of Watchmen. Which is to say that this is a comic book about people who do very violent things to make the world "a better place" but the narrative seems to be endorsing their perspective entirely. Some folks argue that the comic wants you to take the Authority as the actual villains, but if so, it's pretty subtle, which perhaps makes the whole thing more clever. But regardless, at its best, The Authority is a very intriguing depiction of utopian violence.

The first story is "The Circle." Grant Morrison likes to talk about how this story's opening was a big deal, about how it made him sit up and pay attention to superhero comics again. (He says this in both this book's foreword and Supergods.) I don't know about that. Maybe I just have the benefit of another 13 years, but it's all pretty normal stuff: bad buys destroying a city, the civil authorities having no idea what to do, a villain who's a pretty terrible racist caricature. The Authority doesn't show up in time to save Moscow, but they do intervene in London during the Gamorran terrorists' second attack. There's a lot of violence; what makes it noteworthy is how fun the comic makes it. One of the characters, Jack Hawksmoor, says at one point, "I've been waiting to punch someone in the brains all goddamn day." And then he does just that. (Though he does it a couple pages earlier because the narrative is out of sequence.)

Eventually, the Authority beats the Gamorran terrorists to the punch, and they're waiting for them when they attack Los Angeles. But not only do they defeat the hundred of clone warriors flying into Los Angeles, one of the Authority (the Batman analogue "Midnighter") plows a spaceship through the capital city of the Gamorra Island to wipe out their base of operations, grinning while he says, "I love being me." Between Los Angeles and Gamorra, I am certain that millions lie dead at the end of the story.

One of the Authority, Swift (who we are told used to be a pacifist, only "it's just not a good enough world that you can work for it without hurting people badly") asks at the story's end, "How many people you think we killed?" Jack Hawksmoor replies, "How many people would've died if we hadn't been here? It's not a great answer, I know; but it's the best answer there is. We saved more people than we killed." There's something jarring but sort of energizing about a superhero comic that's willing to be so blasé about death. Millions just died, and hey, you should just roll with it. The utopian stuff comes in pretty explicitly on the next page, when Jenny Sparks, the leader of the Authority, points out that with what the United Nations captures from Gamorra, they'll have the capability of performing mass cloning and the key to instantaneous mass transit. Plus the UN will know that the Authority knows they have it, so they'll be sure to use it for good-- or else. Through the threat of violent action, "the world will be a better place." Awesome!, right?

This right here is the single best page of The Authority. It's the last page of chapter two of "The Circle." The issue doesn't end on a bad guy threat or an attack. It ends on a character-- our protagonist-- declaring that "there had to someone left to save the world. And someone left to change it." Jenny Sparks isn't the first superhero to say something like this, but usually when one does, they're going evil. Think of Superman in Red Son ("I could take care of everyone's problems if I ran this place and, to tell you the truth, there's no good reason why I shouldn't"), or maybe Hal Jordan when Coast City is destroyed. When they say things like that, it means they're going bad. The imagery shows them as deranged, mad. But here, we see a beautiful image of a wistful Jenny Sparks looking out a window, the light of the multiverse playing off her face, as she declares her intention to change the way people live. And that's it-- end issue. What an idea! Not to mention, what great art, from Bryan Hitch's pencils and Paul Neary's inks down to Laura DePuy's consistently amazing colors.

The rest of The Absolute Authority is not as good as "The Circle." Or rather, it's just as good, but that's a problem; the stories keep on doing the same thing again and again. These are "widescreen" "decompressed" comics, which would be fine if something happened. The second story, "Shiftships," has Earth attacked by people from an alternate reality, but the first three of its four chapters are taken by information gathering. Information gathering that's ultimately pointless, as the Authority just bombs the crap out of the other world.

The story gets interesting right then, as Jenny Sparks tells its inhabitants:

Albion is free of the Blue. Sicily and the Italian capital infrastructure are gone. If needed, we can annihilate the Hanseatic regions within the hour. If we're asked to, we will go into China and Japan. If we have to, we will personally expunge the royal blood and military rape culture from the face of the planet. We're here to give you a second chance. Make a world worth living in. We are the Authority. Behave.

Then, when the Engineer expresses reservation about what they've done (and I would argue that this is actually an authorizing move for a writer), Jenny Sparks says, "Maybe we just did what we said we would, all along. Changing things for the better. One Earth down, one to go." Oh, now this is getting interesting!

Wait, the story's over? That's where "Shiftships" comes to an end; all the ideas raised by that ending go entirely unexplored. How would they actually enforce their control over this world? Why don't they do this to their ("our") world? In his foreword, Morrison claims that The Authority is more realistic than other superhero stories, but it's making the same elision of violence that the original Superman made. The massive, violent change happens on a world we'll never see again, so there's no real consequences.

The last story, "Outer Dark," is maybe entertaining in a comic book kind of way-- the Earth is attacked by globs of stuff that actually lived there first and want it back-- and moves faster than the previous stories, but is otherwise unimpressive. There is an interesting bit where we see Jenny Sparks's all-guns-blazing approach to reform be overridden, but that's about it.

The Authority has the temerity to raise more interesting problems than it's capable of dealing with. I don't want it to be dark and Watchmen-type serious, but on the other hand, it doesn't have to be as splashy and inconsequential as it sometimes is. There's good writing, good art, and good colors here, but they're not always being harnessed to something that actually needs their potential level of power.